Sex and the Single Panel

The original New York Times headline for Helen Gurley Brown’s obituary, “GAVE ‘SINGLE GIRL’ A LIFE IN FULL (SEX, SEX, SEX),” reminded me of this New Yorker cartoon, which ran in 1968:

Then, as now, no cartoon was published in the magazine without the editor (at that time, William Shawn) giving it the O.K. The cartoons reflected, in a fun-house-mirror way, the official attitude of the magazine toward the “sexual revolution.” That attitude was not one of thankfulness but rather one that swung between shock and resignation.

I think we know which way that group voted.

Sex had its place, of course, and that place was in an office where a new laptop model meant a new secretary.

Back then, sex was an accepted droit du C.E.O., which, as this cartoon would have us believe, was not only tolerated (note the smile on the secretary’s face) but welcomed. What we now correctly consider sexual harassment was then viewed, by Brown and many others, as a kind of fair-trade agreement.

From Brown’s Times obituary:

She went on to hold a string of secretarial jobs—17 by her own count—and discovered the measure of security that sex could bring. At every office, or so it seemed, there were bosses eager to fondle and dandle. In exchange, there might be a fur or an apartment or the wherewithal to keep her family going.

For Helen Gurley Brown, there was nothing inherently wrong with patriarchy. Any woman could benefit from it… as long as she had a friend with benefits, who was a patriarch.